An Important Appeal to the Struggling People of the Country

Friends! Brothers and sisters!

Several countries of the world including India are struggling with the pandemic caused by Coronavirus. It can spread via touch, sneezing and coughing. Many a times its symptoms appear after two weeks. Many people become the carrier of virus even though they are not infected by it. Under such a circumstance it becomes a compulsion to avoid large gatherings, meetings and demonstrations. This virus has taken thousands of lives in countries that have better medical facilities and where the population density and dense settlements are much less than India.

One can only imagine the horrible outcomes if the infection spreads widely in India. Needless to say that if the pandemic spreads widely in our country, the main victims will mostly be the poor and toiling masses and those communities that are discriminated against even in medical and healthcare facilities.

Under such a circumstance, we are faced with a difficult question: what to do with the protest and demonstrations that are going on throughout the country against CAA-NRC? Our brave mothers and sisters have continued these protests despite the brutal repression and various kinds of unscrupulous acts, rumours and false venomous propaganda. It is because of these demonstrations that the protest against CAA-NRC-NPR has become an issue for struggle throughout the country and lakhs of people have joined it.

However, hundreds and often thousands of women, children and old people are present at these protests. It is also clear that despite taking precautions the infection can spread in such places. This threat has increased further in the wake of criminal negligence by Modi government. This infection will not just spread to the protest sites, but it is most likely to spread to the settlements and localities outside. Under such circumstances the fascists will get yet another opportunity to malign the movement and play their nefarious game of polarisation.

What is to be done under such a circumstance?

The activists of Revolutionary Workers’ Party of India have been participating in these protests in many cities and towns across several states including Shaheen Bagh in Delhi. But in today’s circumstance we believe that we need to take some tough decisions. We need to:

• Stop these protests temporarily. We should recommence the protests as soon as the Coronavirus threat is gone. If we have people’s power with us, we will be definitely successful in doing so.
• So long as the threat of Coronavirus remains and so long as we don’t recommence our protests, we must adopt new and creative forms of struggle. In fact, we must continue these new forms even after the recommencement of the protests. While these protests have made CAA-NRC-NPR a rallying point throughout the country, now that the struggle has reached the second phase, we need to go beyond only protest demonstrations, because the real task now is to make our civil disobedience movement successful by ensuring that the NPR process that is scheduled to begin from 1^st April does not become a success.
  For that, apart from the protests we need to form small teams and start door-to-door, lane-to-lane and locality-to-locality campaigns and convince the masses of all the religions that CAA-NRC-NPR is not just anti-Muslim but anti-people as well and make them ready to boycott CAA-NRC-NPR. We need to form NPR boycott committees. This is a task that can be done on a limited scale even now through small teams in our neighbourhood while taking all precautions and it can be expanded after the threat of coronavirus is gone.

• Besides we can take cue from the people of Brazil (which has been copied by fascist Modi in reverse manner who has asked to clap and bang plates on one day for 5 minutes) and clap and bang plates on our balconies and rooftops against Modi government every evening at a fixed time (which could be 7pm or 7:30 pm). The people of Brazil had recently adopted this form against their semi-fascist and right wing president Bolsonaro who happens to be as ignorant and as stupid as Modi. We also need to adopt this form against the criminal negligence by Modi government of not making required arrangements and thus risking the lives of millions of citizens and also against CAA-NRC-NPR.

Besides, other forms that can be run without a gathering, can be devised to take our views to people and continue the movement. People have devised several creative and effective forms during this movement.

But for now we need to suspend our protests-demonstrations. Suspension in no way means that our demonstration has ended forever or our movement has come to an end. It only means that we will restart it with even more strength and vigour as soon as the emergency caused by the outbreak of Corona Pandemic gets over. Meanwhile we will continue the movement and protest against the fascist Modi government through other means.

With revolutionary greetings,
Coordination committee, Revolutionary Workers’ Party of India – RWPI